“DEAR BOSINNEY,
“I think that in both our interests it would be extremely undesirable that matters should be so left at this stage. I did not mean to say that if you should exceed the sum named in my letter to you by ten or twenty or even fifty pounds, there would be any difficulty between us. This being so, I should like you to reconsider your answer. You have a “free hand” in the terms of this correspondence, and I hope you will see your way to completing the decorations, in the matter of which I know it is difficult to be absolutely exact.
“Yours truly,
“SOAMES FORSYTE.”
Bosinney’s answer, which came in the course of the next day, was:
“May 20.
“DEAR FORSYTE,
“Very well.
“PH. BOSINNEY.”
CHAPTER VI
OLD JOLYON AT THE ZOO
Old Jolyon disposed of his second Meeting—an ordinary Board—summarily. He was so dictatorial that his fellow directors were left in cabal over the increasing domineeringness of old Forsyte, which they were far from intending to stand much longer, they said.
He went out by Underground to Portland Road Station, whence he took a cab and drove to the Zoo.
He had an assignation there, one of those assignations that had lately been growing more frequent, to which his increasing uneasiness about June and the “change in her,” as he expressed it, was driving him.